Re: really attracting developers

From:

Philippe C.D. Robert

Subject:

Re: really attracting developers

Date:

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 21:47:02 +0200

Hi,
On 25.08.2006, at 12:05, Rogelio Serrano wrote:

Whats keeping other developers from gnustep?
incomplete ide?
incomplete nextstep based system?
incomplete libraries?
i don't buy the general applications unavailability argument. we are
talking about people who want to create apps under gnustep.
i don't buy the appearance argument either.

It's funny (and sad...) that this discussion pops up every one and
then since years ...

IMO it is because some GNUstep developers don't want to see GNUstep
being a complete desktop solution (for X11 based systems), instead
they favour the cross-platform API path, whereas others don't want to
write major applications for GNUstep because it is not a complete
desktop and thus has no target audience - sadly GNUstep apps just
don't integrate with other desktops. It is kind of a chicken and egg
situation (yes I am aware of Etoile, but IMO I doubt this project
will have a big impact on GNUstep in terms of attracting new users or
developers - unless it gets integrated into GNUstep itself).

This issue has never been resolved and as a consequence the project
does not really make progress in terms of attracting new users or
developers. Worse, while Java, .NET(Mono) or even gtk and Qt made
progress in terms of installed base, functionality and maturity,
GNUstep simply did not. Even more worse, you cannot use GNUstep to
deploy OS X code on other OSes since the beasts are too different,
e.g. there are many more APIs on OSX which are being used other than
Cocoa when developing OS X apps. Not even the Objective-C runtime is
100% compatible (which will become a real issue with Leopard, I am
afraid).

So tell me one reason why I should write code for/with GNUstep unless
I am an Objective-C aficionado .. (which I am, actually :). IMO
GNUstep needs to change its focus otherwise it will always remain one
of those many nice toolkits which will - unfortunately - never make
it to the real surface...